Are the chips in a line of memory the same at different speeds?

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Wayne Anderson

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Aug 19, 2014
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Looking at new DDR 4 offerings from g.skill and corsair, there are many speeds available in ripjaws and vengeance lines, respectively.

Try as I might, I cant find any indication that the component parts are actually different.

Do they use the same "chips" at the different speeds? If so, how do they test or differentiate to figure out which ones go to which products?
 
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Generally they are, but there's no guarantee.

DRAM chips purchased from the manufacturer (Hynix, Samsung, Micron) are purchased in speed bins. The purchased speed bin guarantees certain performance characteristics when certain operating parameters are met.

For example, the Hynix H5TQ4G43MFR is a 4 gigabit DRAM integrated circuit. Eight of these ICs are used to...
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Pinhedd

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Generally they are, but there's no guarantee.

DRAM chips purchased from the manufacturer (Hynix, Samsung, Micron) are purchased in speed bins. The purchased speed bin guarantees certain performance characteristics when certain operating parameters are met.

For example, the Hynix H5TQ4G43MFR is a 4 gigabit DRAM integrated circuit. Eight of these ICs are used to create a 4GiB DRAM rank, and two ranks may be placed on the same DIMM (one on each side, for a total of 16 ICs) to form an 8GiB DIMM.

The H5TQ4G43MFR is available in 4 speed bins grades corresponding to certain data rates and operating frequencies:

G7 - DDR3-1066 7-7-7
H9 - DDR3-1333 9-9-9
PB - DDR3-1600 11-11-11
RD - DDR3-1866 13-13-13

Each speed bin also supports the data rate of the speed bins below it. The RD speed bin is guaranteed to operate at DDR3-1866, DDR3-1600, DDR3-1333, and DDR3-1066. The G7 speed bin is only guaranteed to operate at DDR3-1066.

Each speed bin is accompanied by a range (minimum, typical, and maximum) of operating parameters and the performance of the device is guaranteed to fall within these ranges. All four of those speed bins guarantee a read to data ready delay of at most 14ns (depends on particular alignments).
Memory module manufacturers can then pick chips with the most desirable performance characteristics to create high end modules. For example, a handful of hand picked RD chips may respond well to a little bit of extra supply voltage which reduces the read to data ready data to around 10ns which allows them to operate at DDR3-2133 11-11-11
 
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